Adedapo Adesanya
By Adedapo Adesanya
Following a recent loan extended by the World Bank, the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has set a target of capturing the entire Nigerian population on its database by 2025.
Last week, Business Post reported that the global lender had earmarked $340 million out of $2.2 billion meant for six projects in Nigeria for digital identification development project. This will allow the NIMC, the agency responsible for this, to increase the number of Nigerians with national identification number (NIN) to reach about 150 million.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of NIMC, Mr Aliyu Aziz, said in an interview with The Cable that, “Our target is to capture the entire population within 3-5 years and have a credible, reliable and easily accessible identity database.
“By providing a universal, secure and nationally accepted means of identification, our people are empowered to exercise their basic rights, affirm their identity in an orderly manner, access services, claim their entitlements and benefit from social welfare programmes among many others.
“This system of identification will greatly help the work of our security and law enforcement agencies.”
“The federal government is looking beyond identity harmonization to data harmonization in the long run.
“The building blocks of achieving this is by uniquely identifying every individual so that he/she is consistently seen as one person by government irrespective of the agency visited or service demanded. One person, one identity for life,” he added.
The Federal Government has constantly stated its need to boost digital identity in Nigeria by providing a unique identifier to every individual living in Nigeria and even to people of descent in the diaspora.
With the implementation of the World Bank Identity 4 Development project in Nigeria, this signifies the commencement of the implementation journey.
The credit facility from the Bank will be jointly financed through an International Development Association (IDA) credit of $115 million; $100 million from the French Agency for Development and $215 million from the European Investment Bank.
A successful digital imprint will enable people in Nigeria, especially marginalised groups, to access welfare-enhancing services and enhance the ID system’s legal and technical safeguards to protect personal data and privacy.
As of November 2019, the NIMC said 38 million Nigerians had been issued NIN, a requirement for getting land registry documents, drivers’ licence and the Nigerian passport.
